United States v. Keskes

Keskes owned and managed Asena, a resale operation that sold goods on its own website, eBay, and Amazon.com. Between 2006 and 2009, Keskes sold more than $3.5 million in merchandise and disbursed more than $12.2 million but none of its checks was written to manufacturers of products sold. Instead, Keskes wrote checks totaling $3.1 million to “Cash” and another $2.1 million to individuals. FBI agents searched Keskes’s warehouse and seized enough merchandise to fill 350 large boxes. Many items still had security tags or store price tags on them. No documents were found to indicate a legitimate source. Convicted of six counts of wire fraud and five counts of mail fraud, Keskes was sentenced to 78 months’ imprisonment. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, rejecting arguments that the district court erred in denying a mistrial based on the prosecutor’s comment that a judge had issued a search warrant for Keskes’s warehouse, that the court erred in admitting testimony about “gypsies” being thieves and testimony about statements attributed to a man named “Robert,” and that the court erred at sentencing by relying on his silence as a sign of a lack of remorse and by relying on an inaccurate fact. View "United States v. Keskes" on Justia Law